Resisters at Work

Generating Productive Resistance in the Workplace

Datos Bibliográficos

ID23318980
AutoresDavid Courpasson (0000-0002-1961-0496, EMLYON Business School, OCE Research Centre, 69130 Ecully, France), Françoise Dany (EMLYON Business School, OCE Research Centre, 69130 Ecully, France), Stewart Clegg (0000-0001-6083-4283, University of Technology Sydney Business School, New South Wales 2007, Australia)
Año2012
Volumen23
Número3
Páginas801-819
Fecha de publicación2012-06-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaOrganization Science (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1047-7039 • E-ISSN: 1526-5455
EditorialInstitute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1287/orsc.1110.0657
OpenAlexW2161746369
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas67
Referencias citadas71

Research has recognized the transformative dimension of resistance in the workplace. Yet resistance is still seen as an adversarial and antagonistic process that management can accept or reject; thus, understanding how resistance can actually influence workplace change remains a challenge for research. In this paper, we offer an analysis of two situations of resistance wherein resisters, organized in temporary enclaves, are able to influence top management's decisions and produce eventual change. Whether or not resistance becomes productive depends on the skillful work of resisters and the creation of powerful “objects of resistance” that enable resisters to modify temporarily the power configuration of a situation and oblige top management to listen to their claims and accommodate to the new configuration. This paper shows that resistance can be better explained by what resisters do to achieve their ends rather than by seeing resistance as a fixed opposition between irreconcilable adversaries.

Adversarial system · Opposition (politics) · Pedagogy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Public relations · Resistance (ecology) · Sociology · Transformative learning · Work (physics) · Critical Realism in Sociology · Engineering · Law · Management and Organizational Studies · Management Theory and Practice